Test Tubes
by hellolittlelove
Summary: A series of delectable drabbles. Teenage hormones and Chemical X. Reds, Greens, Blues.
1. Photograph (Greens)

HLL: This will be a series of drabbles that I've written that don't have any place in longer narratives.

Why are Buttercup and Butch so fun to write? Probably because I love the poison in their love. They're both sadomasochists when it comes down to it. Also, Butch still remains my favorite RRB to write. Enjoy, folks.

Disclaimer: I don't own the Powerpuff Girls.

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 **One: Photograph.**

Her mouth watered. When desire scratched at the inside of her chest, she swore.

No. No way.

She slammed a fist into the red bricks. Someone screeched. Blossom snatched her by the ear and dragged her off, a disgusting display of Christmas colors as they disappeared from the tiny crater next to the school bulletin board.

"What the hell are you doing?" She asked, voice dark in a way that it only was when they were alone. Behind the school, they stood, two sisters. The unsuspecting glorious weather did nothing to settle Buttercup's rage.

"Nothing," she replied with a snarl.

Blossom narrowed her eyes. "Why are you assaulting innocent school walls?"

"Because I have an attitude problem," Buttercup growled back. Because that's what her sister was thinking, so why not just say it for her? "Because I'm the sister that fucks up."

Blossom seethed and turned on her heel, muttering something about hormones and tempers and things that nobody but a team leader had to deal with.

Buttercup wasn't thinking about her sister, though. Her mind was throwing back the image. Tossing it in her face with smug force. That stupid photo fastened to the cork, boasting the boys' soccer team victory. It championed their star player, a disgusting splotch of heinous masculinity and slurred speech.

His grin. His nasty twisted face. His cheekbones. His glittering eyes. His victory glow.

Her chest tightened. Pressure mounted. She was a bomb waiting to blow, ready to take out a city block.

Because she hadn't thought about wanting to punch that face.

She had thought about kissing it.

Her hands curled into fists.

What the fuck was wrong with her?

The wave of self-loathing came, the way it did when she was watching her sisters socialize with smiling faces that didn't cower in fear.

And she, a wild girl, a monster always hungering for destruction. She licked her lips, tasted the dust flying up from the dry patches of grass and wished it was blood.

So, when he caught her in thought and called at her snidely from his pack of beef-headed comrades, there was no hesitance.

"What's the matter, Butter-cunt?"

She'd beat that handsome face into the ground until the desire stopped.

When she lunged for him, the flicker in his eyes was everything she lived for.

They tore into each other, his friends spilling by the wayside with guttural protests and shouts.

Every bruise was a line of a poem. She swung and listened to the sweet sound of their bones cracking.

When Blossom walked by the next day on the way to testify as a character witness in the school hearing, she noticed the faint outline of a photograph missing from the bulletin board.

A sly smile bloomed on her face.

The toughest sister always had a habit of taking war trophies.

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Read and review, please!


	2. Sugar Gone Bad (Blues)

HLL: Hello! LOL, fully meant for this to be like 400 words, but...here we are!

Good ol' blues.

Disclaimer: I don't own The Powerpuff Girls.

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 **TWO: Sugar Going Bad.**

Sugar. The first.

Didn't that make her the oldest? She'd never feel that way.

People were always telling her that she was sweet. Sweet face, sweet words, sweet laugh. Sometimes, the creeps that skipped class and hung out by the gas station would mutter, "Sweet ass."

That's when she reminded them quickly that sugar is capable of going bad. Very bad, very quick.

Anger for her was strange. The rage never came out in yelling. When she was really mad, she cried. She was always crying. Or that's what her sisters muttered under their breath when her eyes welled up.

Rude perverted boys didn't make her cry. They got well-deserved punches that would make Buttercup proud and Blossom wince with mixed emotion.

But, beautiful boys…

She'd never tell her sisters that nothing seemed as sweet as spotting him across the courtyard. When she got a glance of his blonde hair, her heart flipped.

She was twisted like cotton candy.

His passing laughter brought tears that she couldn't stop. She was hanging out with her friends and he passed behind her, talking to one of his brothers.

He didn't have to start anything or say anything. He wasn't like Butch or Brick. They knew how to start a battle.

He knew he didn't need to bother.

The absence of a defense was enough.

She would make an excuse to dash off and burst out into tears, heart filled with a desire like poison. Her friends would chalk it up to stress from tests, from her intense sisters, or from fighting monsters in the dark hours of the morning. Maybe all of it together. Life must be hard for a super girl.

That's what nobody talked about. How you're supposed to leave sugar in a cool dry place to keep it good.

And that he knew. She knew he knew.

"Don't come around me," she wanted to tell him.

Once, they'd both been late to leave school. Everyone else had gone. He was there in the hallway.

Why?

She'd been collecting a folder after finishing a club meeting. Her hand was resting on the handle of her locker when she turned and noticed him.

The sun had been setting. Lazy rays of soft light cast an orange glow on him. It looked strange against his blonde and blue. Too much.

She didn't have to guess why her vision was blurring.

"You're always crying when you see me," he said. Soft, but gruff. He was the tamest of his brothers. She swallowed. And the most beautiful.

She didn't know what to say.

That he was right?

Her bottom lip began to tremble.

And then she just started talking. Words that she hadn't known were inside of her.

"I guess I can't help it," she told him. "That's what happens when you come around me. If I looked at you too long, I think I might unravel."

She'd never forget the rush of pink to his cheeks. How maybe she'd imagined it, hoped for it underneath the glow of the sunset.

And then she ran because her sweetness was melting away. Her tears were going to turn her into syrup.

That'd been a month ago.

She pressed her forehead against the cool mirror of the girls' bathroom. When she returned to her friends, he was gone. Off with his brother somewhere.

The next day, she stayed late like that time. Just because. To look at the sunset and her reflection to see if you could accidentally mistake a blush in that light. She wanted to know.

A door opened beside her. Her breath caught. Light hair, blue eyes, a recipe for her matching disaster.

She guessed he'd stayed late too.

He took a step past her and stood there. She stared at his sloping broad shoulders, the tears starting to soften the edges of his shirt. Blue, blue, blue. That was his color.

"Bubbles."

It was the first time he'd said her name outside of a fight in years.

"Yes?"

His back stiffened. When he turned his head, as if to look out the window, she saw the warmth of his cheeks. Not a mistake. Not a trick of the eye.

"What you said last time. You said if you looked at me too long then you'd...Well, you know."

A pause.

"Is it just if you look at me?"

His question was a slow whisper. Quieter than she'd ever heard him speak.

The tears came harder.

"That's when I cry the most," her little voice confessed.

His nod was long. The hall was quiet. Her heart was thundering.

"Thank you," he said. "That's what I needed to know."

The next day, she was kicking herself for watching him walk off with ammunition against her. It felt suddenly dirty. Like he knew a secret and hadn't given her anything back. She'd opened herself up.

Too sweet. That's what happened when you were too sweet.

Still she went back to see if she left a piece of herself in that hallway. To see if she could salvage anything from the shiny tile floors.

It was later than it'd been the first two times. Her conversation with a friend had run over. She bit her lip as she walked down the hallway. The cool tones from the approaching evening were so different from the warmth of the sunset.

When the lights turned off, she frowned. The school must've been closing. The lack of fluorescent lighting cast her in semi-darkness.

She headed for the door with a heavy heart. Heavy because she'd been hoping that maybe he'd be here and she could've seen if a blush looked differently at night. Just to make sure since she hadn't imagined it through her tears. That she hadn't imagined they'd shared something. Anything. Even if it was just chaos.

But, there was the sound of a door opening.

And there he was. A shadowy handsome boy at the end of the hall. A boy she shouldn't want.

The tears were coming, but they were slow. Much slower than before.

"I turned off the lights," he said in a voice that was even softer than the one before. "Does that make it better?"

She stood there, mouth opening and shutting, feeling like a struggling fish made from sugar.

He cleared his throat. She could barely see him shifting, walking towards her with an unsure step.

"Could you look at me when it's like this?"

"I don't understand," she said. Her voice was breaking. She tried to stop her hands from shaking. "We're enemies. Why are you trying to make this better?"

The silence stretched for minutes. They plunged deeper into darkness. The light from the emergency exit sign glowed in the background like an ember.

"Boomer," she breathed.

His arms were warm when they wrapped around her. The air in her throat vanished when he buried his head into her hair.

That's when she heard the shortness of his breath, the sniffling nose, the smell of salt.

The sure sign of sugar going bad.

"Because I guess I can't help it either."

They stood for a long time.

"Is it when you look at me? Is that when it's the worst?" she asked.

"No, it's your laugh. When I hear you."

"I've never seen you." Her voice felt foreign, as if she was finally paying attention the way she sounded for the first time. She was blinking over and over. Just blinking. Awed and frozen in his embrace.

"Have you met my brothers? You learn to stuff the feeling down."

"Oh, yeah."

He never let go of her, face still buried in her shoulder.

Her thoughts were raving, wild and mad, when she tugged on the sleeve of his arm.

"Boomer?"

"Yeah?"

"This is bad."

"Yeah."

She listened to the sound of her heart beating and thought about how you can't go back once you've done something.

"Do you want to be bad together?"

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Hope you enjoyed! I really like to think of Boomer and Bubbles as the first ones to surrender out of the PPGxRRB pairing. They're too close to their emotions to hide it for long. This is just one idea of them getting together after realizing they both want to cry buckets in each other's presence.


	3. Existential Crisis (Reds)

HLL: Hello, beautiful people!

Thank you guys so much for the kind reviews. They brighten up my day so much. :) I'm glad you guys are enjoying the series so far.

Disclaimer: I don't own the Powerpuff Girls

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 **Three: Existential Crisis.**

She was a walking existential crisis, seven days a week.

"Who am I?"

A question she asked herself in the privacy of her own room. Sometimes, she'd lift her hands up and stare at the veins in her wrists. Chemical X coursing through her veins. Something to prove right alongside it.

She inhaled the abstract. Chopped it up, analyzed it, measured it. Sometimes, it was hard, though. It was hard to be the leader, hard to wrestle with your thick hair in the morning before school, and hard to convince others to follow the rules when you weren't even sure that any of this was real.

Her English teacher asked for a personal essay. When Blossom turned hers in, her teacher took her to the side after class one day.

"Is everything okay?" Worried brown eyes behind round glasses.

Blossom furrowed her brow and frowned. "Of course."

"Oh," said her teacher. "I thought you might be depressed."

Who wouldn't be depressed if they were contemplating their meaningless existence every other day? She bit her tongue and said she appreciated the concern. Even though she didn't.

But, her answer wasn't enough. She found herself being politely pulled into a meeting with a guidance counselor.

"Let's meet twice a week," he said with a dimpled smile. She felt the lasers in her eyes heating up. How dare you! Me? In need of counseling?

What she was in need of was a philosopher who she could talk to. That's what she told him. He smiled widely when she said that. She was off the hook, but he was going to put her somewhere else.

"You know best about what you need. There's a philosophy club. Why don't you join it? If you join, you don't have to come see me."

Done. Signed. She stalked off on a Wednesday afternoon to the basement of the school building. A light was flickering. She blew a stray lock of hair out of her face, debating letting it all down in its monstrous wavy glory.

She knocked, but there wasn't an answer.

"Hello," she announced to the room after waiting a few more seconds.

Oops. Her counselor forgot to mention there was only one member. His red eyes crushed into her. They sighed at the same time. A pile of worn paperbacks sat in front of him.

"This is my club."

"I need to be in it," she insisted firmly. He was better than a guidance counselor. Better than all of her classmates seeing her in the waiting room of the school office and whispering down the hall.

He scowled. "Join another club."

She needed a different strategy.

"Who am I?"

His eyes grew wider.

She pressed on, "Who are you?"

He sat in his seat with a hard look. At her, past her, towards something else entirely.

"Funny, I came here with those same questions," he said in a snarl that she thought would be handsome in a different light. If he wasn't who he was because girls like her don't give boys like that the time of day. That's what she told herself.

"You used to have another member here?" She asked, gesturing to the empty open third chair.

His half-smile was debilitating in its wickedness. Her knees threatened to go on strike.

With a wicked look, he nodded. "He couldn't handle our arguments."

A rundown clock in the corner of the room ticked loudly.

"Lovely," she said as she sat in the seat across from him.

"I'll tear you apart," he warned.

She smiled. It might've been real. She wasn't sure. How could she be?

"You can tear me apart right after you tell me who I am."

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HLL: I loveeeeee the Reds. They're harder to write but worth it. They'd be the last to get together and the most intent on denying it, which is funny considering that they're supposed to be the analytical planners who can forecast possibilities.


	4. Nightmare (Greens)

HLL: WHY is Butch so fun to write? He's excellent at flaunting that he's screwed up. ;) I intended for this one to be about 500 words...but you know me, I get carried away.

Disclaimer: I don't own PPG.

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 **Four: Nightmare.**

What's the difference between a dream and a nightmare?

He could tell you, but he wasn't in the habit of speaking to anyone about anything. Not without punches flying first. From him, no reason needed. Sometimes, he just liked watching the blood flow.

It didn't matter if it was his own. That was fine. When he was bored, raging against the confines that his brother (the _leader_ ) set.

On certain days, anger made him sleepy. He'd fall into a slumber for fourteen hours, rolling on a mattress with no sheets because fuck doing laundry.

He knew he was fucked up because his dreams weren't filled with award ceremonies or tropical paradises or even winning a million dollars. He could care less about awards, hated the sun, and would rather steal a million dollars.

No, they were filled with fighting. Punches and kicks and moves he'd picked up from kung-fu movies.

Nightmares were when he lost fights.

And he only ever lost to one person besides his bossy brother.

His mouth twisted, but his mind sung with memory from the blows they'd gotten from her.

A counselor once looked at him over the clipboard and spelled out the word _sadomasochist_ with him. Then he read Butch the definition.

The counselor called it a diagnosis, but Butch thought that it might be his religion.

"You're messed up," Boomer told him when Butch got real destructive for no reason.

Butch could've cared less.

But, when it was sleep, his sleep...that was different.

The first time was on a Saturday night after he'd finally passed out at four in the morning. His arm was slung halfway off the bed, his legs halfway off the other side, and his head on nothing but the mattress with no pillow in the sight.

It'd started out like his dreams, it really did. When she started bleeding, he was laughing in his dream. Cackling because she'd already landed a punch on him and it was only fair. Even in his dreams, he was realistic. If it wasn't a good fight, he wasn't interested.

She was supposed to do what she always did in his dreams: get up and punch him or throw him across the room or even an insult would've been enough.

But, she didn't.

Her hands went around his neck. He was ready to be choked, hurled, beaten.

When she kissed him, the sky turned red. He accidentally threw himself off of his mattress while waking up, slamming his skull into a nightstand.

"Shit." He glared at the mattress as if it'd caused this dream.

The second time, he was ready. He'd tried reading about lucid dreaming. It was when you could control your own dreams. Sort of.

When she went down, he lunged for her.

Her dark smile was quick as she leaned in while he landed his kick.

"Butch."

All she had to do was whisper into his ear and he was rolling off his bed again with a string of curses to follow. His skin was covered in goosebumps. He thought about setting his body on fire, bruising himself up so bad that he'd never dream about her again.

His mirror said he looked rough, but his eyes were shaking with excitement. He shoved the desire building in his chest down. Deep, deep, deep. Where his demons slept.

The third time, he was screwed. He knew it. His control slipped right through his fingers.

When she came towards him, his body moved first. Rough kiss and rough touch. All he could do was rough. Except that it didn't matter because the rough made it better, so much better. His body had three thousand volts of pure energy coursing through it when his fingers grabbed her hair.

When he woke up, he was panting, but he hadn't rolled off the bed.

The longing. The longing was there. His mouth was dried, lips cracking at the corners when he let out a bitter laugh.

Guilty habit.

That was what it became. For a boy who advertised every dirty habit, you'd think that personal shame wouldn't eat away at him.

It did. He was him. He could never change that. He remembered the counselor sounding out the word and wondered if maybe Boomer was right.

He was messed up.

One month later and he was gritting his teeth.

It was free period. A fifteen-minute break and his brothers were talking about nothing. A game, a class. He was seething, shoulders hunched while his eyes darted around.

Green. Bitter green that he wanted to crunch in his mouth.

If he hadn't seen her, maybe the nightmares would've remained in his head. Maybe he could've sweated them out. Maybe he could've learned to forget that sick rush of pleasure.

"Butch?" Boomer's voice was littered with concern.

Because his brothers knew how to spot a predator.

It was too late.

He was halfway across the courtyard before they could move. His tackle was hard. The screams of her friends were loud in his ear. They rocketed past everyone else, smashing into trees, a bench, a fountain. All the while, her fists were on him.

"What the fuck is your problem?" she cried out when they finally rolled to a stop. He was crouching and she'd landed up against a tree. The countryside. Her eyes whirled around. "If you wanted a fight, you could've just asked, asshole."

And he knew when he was silent that she started to realize that this wasn't like the other times.

He'd be carrying on and hurling out derogatory names at her. His taunts would be merciless.

Quiet was scary. Her eyes narrowed.

"What the hell is going on?"

He might've mistaken an excited beat behind those glittering green eyes. Was it the blaring sunshine above them? The beast inside him wasn't patient enough to ask.

She was up, ready to strike. They rushed towards one another and she wasn't expecting his arms wrapping around her because he was a snake. And then she felt him chuckle against her neck.

He'd lost it. That's why he was laughing.

Because he was messed up.

He kissed her as rough as he'd done in all of those half-nightmares.

And there it was.

Her sounds sounded like his when they were in battle. He could've picked up a sound from her over a mile away, but he'd never been this close before.

Two growls of pleasure as teeth gnashed against lips. They slammed into the ground behind them.

Two.

His eyes flew open. Two.

No dream. Two.

No nightmare. Two.

She flung him off of her, wiping her mouth fiercely with her sleeve. Pink stained her cheeks, a horrendous color against her green color scheme. She was trying to mouth something, an insult. Her hands balled into fists, a fight attempting to brew.

But, they were staring at one another know, sitting on their asses with a few yards in between. Blinking the way fighters do when a left hook comes out of nowhere.

"You're messed up," she screamed suddenly.

His voice was breathy, a strange sound even to his ears. "Well, so are you."

Several miles away, their siblings were rushing after them. Following the trail of destruction, the broken branches, and startled faces as they headed towards the city's limits.

She swallowed. He watched the painful lump go down as her desperate eyes flew back to where they'd come from. They'd be here in minutes.

"They're going to stop us," she muttered.

He nodded with a cross look. "What a shame."

Her green eyes met his. The beast inside of her was coming out to play.

He saw it, inhaled the rising scent of her fury.

"Hurt me," he told her. "You little nightmare."

They were gone before the others had even made it past the city marker.

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HLL: TWO in one day? Wowza. I couldn't help myself. Love writing from the boys' perspectives.


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